Cameras still fair game, despite last year’s NQR uproar

Students looking to shed their clothes for the hallowed Naked Quad Run (NQR) tonight may want to be wary of who is watching them.

Organizers do not plan to take any new steps to prevent spectators from shooting video and taking photographs of the event, despite incidents last year that provoked a strong student response.

Video and photographs of last year's annual run wound up on YouTube.com and a public nudity Web site.

Currently dubbed the Nighttime Quad Reception, the run began in the early 1980s and has grown in recent years. Each year, thousands of students bear the cold and remove their clothes, running laps on a course around the Residential Quad. The Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate and the Programming Board sponsor the event, which is sanctioned by the university.

The Somerville Journal stirred up controversy last year when it posted a video of NQR on both its Web site and YouTube. Meanwhile, photos from last year's run ended up on Coccozella.com, a Web site that collects anonymously submitted photos from public nudity events.

Coccozella's password-protected pages featured hundreds of pictures from NQR — many full-frontal shots that clearly showed runners. The Journal's video mostly contained shots of individuals' backsides.

Students initially lashed out at the Journal's coverage, voicing their opinions in comments on the paper's Web site, on the video's YouTube page and on the Facebook.com group "NQR 2007: a Tufts Tradition, NOT a Media Sensation."

"A universally accessible online video violates the culture and sanctity of the event, and will discourage the participants in future years," wrote Jennifer Bollenbacher, now a junior, in a letter to the Journal. "Please hold yourselves to the same standards that we as students do and help us continue such an amazing tradition by keeping it private."

But although Tufts is a private university, it remains open to the public, even on the night of NQR, according to Tufts University Police Department (TUPD) Capt. Mark Keith.

"If it's in an area that's open to the public, then you're in public view," Keith said. "We're not going into restricting photographs."

On Wednesday, the Senate and the Programming Board sent an e-mail to students requesting that they not bring cameras to the event. Planners send out a similar e-mail outlining ground rules and the camera appeal every year.

Still, the university has not extended a request for privacy to the surrounding Medford and Somerville communities.

"The more you point something out as, ‘Please don't do this because you wouldn't want to embarrass all these students doing this outrageous thing' … the more news people have an inclination to be sure they're there," Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman said.

Somerville Journal News Editor Kathleen Powers said her newspaper would likely be covering the event again this year.

"Because it was such a big brouhaha [last year], I guess we have to cover it this year," Powers told the Daily. "We need to cover it this year because it was such a controversy last year. We need to cover it in part to look at what has changed due to our coverage from last year."

Powers added that she would only publish videos that could air on television regulated by the Federal Communications Commission and that follow the "Sipowicz" rule, a television standard that allows backside nudity.

After the Journal covered the run last year, a number of students became upset over what they called a lack of consent to having their photographs taken. The Journal responded by removing photographs from its Web site when complaints were made.

Reitman said that before students take part in NQR, they need to be aware of the possibility of being photographed.

"If you're choosing to go out and run around naked in an event that has notoriety beyond the Tufts campus, what expectations do you have of privacy?" Reitman asked.

Some students also expressed concerns about the ethical implications of interviewing intoxicated students at NQR, as the reporter from the Journal did last year. "I don't think it's particularly good journalism," sophomore Royi Gavrielov said. "I don't think you're going to get a legitimate representation of your subject if they're drunk."

Powers defended the Journal's decision to interview drunken subjects. "We don't feel that that was controversial," she said. "If there was someone who was of-age or not that was publicly intoxicated, that is an offense."

Notwithstanding the controversy, many students are looking forward to this year's run.

"[It's] too much of a tradition not to do it," sophomore Julia Stimeck said.